Where is Everybody?

Hello everyone! We've had a string of transitions this summer that have pulled us away from our writing and pushed back our planned reorganization of this blog. JenG has taken a wonderful new job (we miss her!) and we are finishing up some big projects and getting ready to start another one. We've been traveling again and the weeks just keep flying by.  But things are finally settling down and we're looking forward to getting back into sharing information regularly with you very soon.

It is hard to believe that it has been more than 5 years since we started this blog. In the next few weeks, we'll pass 3 million page views. Thank you again to all of you who have shared the URL or a post with others.

If this is your first time to our blog, we encourage you to read the basics on babies cues, crying, and sleep before you move on to other topics by searching the key words down the left side of the page. You can also find our most popular posts by scrolling way down to the bottom of the page.

We hope you are having a great summer!

Welcome New Readers!

For those of you new to our blog, welcome! We would like to tell you how our blog works and where you can find "The Basics" of Baby Behavior, which is a great series of posts to start with if you are new, or if you haven't been around here in a while. You can begin with our overviews on your baby's cues, crying, and sleep patterns.

Everything else we've posted is available to you and there are a few ways you can find what you are looking for.

• On the left side, in the section titled Blog Archive, you can find links to every blog we've posted (the titles of each blog are listed with the most recent at the top).
• If you have a specific topic you are interested in, you can use the keyword links, in the Labels section, to find related entries.
• If you just want to browse full entries, you can use the older posts link at the bottom right of the page. This link will take you through the posts, beginning with the most recent.

We hope that you find the information we've provided useful. If you don't find what you are looking for or if you have any questions, please send us a comment. We love to answer our readers' questions and are always accepting new ideas for future posts!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! We'd like to welcome you back to our blog! We took some time off for the holidays, but now we are back. For those of you new to our blog, welcome! We would like to start the new year off with a little tutorial about how our blog works and where you can find "The Basics" of Baby Behavior, which is a great series of posts to start with if you are new, or if you haven't been around here in a while. You can begin with our overviews on your baby's cues, crying, and sleep patterns.

Everything else we've posted is available to you and there are a few ways you can find what you are looking for.

• On the left side, in the section titled Blog Archive, you can find links to every blog we've posted (the titles of each blog are listed with the most recent at the top).
• If you have a specific topic you are interested in, you can use the keyword links, in the Labels section, to find related entries.
• If you just want to browse full entries, you can use the older posts link at the bottom right of the page. This link will take you through the posts, beginning with the most recent.

We hope that you find the information we've provided useful. If you don't find what you are looking for or if you have any questions, please send us a comment. We love to answer our readers' questions and are always accepting new ideas for future posts!

Baby Behavior in New England!

We're on the road again, this time in beautiful New England conducting trainings in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont! We'll be back next week with new posts. Have a great weekend.

2 Million Views!

We're rapidly approaching 2 million page views! We never could have imagined that our blog would reach so many people in so many places. We've had nearly 600,000 visitors in the last 4 years from 215 countries/territories and more than 14,000 cities/towns. Here's the fast facts:

Where are our readers?

• 58% of our readers come from the United States
• 10% come from the UK
• 8% from Canada
• 6% from Australia and New Zealand
• 4% from India
• 2% from the Philippines
• And all the rest are divided among more than 200 more countries

Our top 3 cities:

• London
• New York
• Sydney

Thanks again to all of you who have been spreading the word!

Update: Where in the World Are Our Readers?

It’s been 4 great years since we started this blog and we continue to grow our readership over time. We feel so grateful to be able to share our work and research with families all over the world!

Back in 2009 we reported that we had readers from 6 continents, 161 countries/territories, and 6,551 cities worldwide!

Now, as of July 2013, we have readers from 6 continents (we’re still not in Antarctica!), 214 countries/territories, and 13, 719 cities. That’s more than double the number of cities!

So, now we’re curious. Where are you from and how long have you been following our blog?

Our Top 10 Posts!

If you are new to our blog, or even if you’ve already done some exploring, we wanted to welcome you by sharing a countdown of our 10 most popular posts. We hope that you’ll find them as useful as the thousands of parents who have come to our blog in the past. The page views keep coming; today, we’ll top 1.9 million! Thanks to all of our loyal readers who continue to spread the word. It is probably not surprising to any of you that most of these posts are related to infants' waking and crying. Here's the countdown:

10. With just under 6000 page views, our 10th most popular post was: Tips for Coping with Persistent Infant Crying

9. The next post, coming in at number 9, was read about 6500 times: Tips for Dealing with a Waking 9-Month-Old

8. Our 8th most popular post, read about 6800 times was: What the Recent Research on "Cry it Out" Doesn't Tell Us

7. More than 7100 visits placed The Science of Infant Sleep Part I: The First 6 Weeks in our top 10.

6. At number 6, one of our earliest posts Baby Behavior Basics Part 3 – Learning and Creating Your Babies Special Language got more than 21,500 page views.

5. A post about puzzling stranger anxiety comes in at number 5, with just under 65,000 page views: When Stranger Anxiety Isn't Only For Strangers

4. We must have some cranky sleepy babies out there! Why Do Some Babies Hate Being Drowsy? is our 4^th most popular post with about 69,000 page views.

3. Even in the womb, an active baby is a healthy baby is the most recent post in our top 10, receiving 97,600 page views since 2012.

2. In second place, with about 103,300 page views was one of our posts about infant development at different ages Infant Development 4-5 months: Distractions, Distractions!

1. Finally! In first place, with just under 275,500 page views: Babies’ Development from 6 to 8 Weeks: Changes, Challenges, and Social Smiles.

That’s it! Our top 10. Which are your favorite posts?

Tired of Looking Through our Blog for the Basics?

Several months ago, we were asked if we had a book that included (in one place) all of the most important baby behavior information that new parents need. Realizing that new parents don't have time to read a long book, we created a short E-book that includes all the basics and a special section on newborn behavior. No surprise, it's called The Secrets of Baby Behavior! The booklet costs less than $5 and any sales will go to support our work here at the center. Our blog is not changing and we look forward to answering your questions and sharing new studies with you into the new year and beyond.

To get more information (and even take a peek inside the book) search for Secrets of Baby Behavior on Amazon.com or click here. 

We'd like to thank all of our readers who've inspired the nearly 350 posts we've published over the last 3 1/2 years. 

New Around Here?

For those of you who are new to our blog, we'd like to welcome you! Since we began over 3 years ago, we've posted more than 335 entries to help families better understand their babies. We encourage all of our new readers to start with the basics before moving on to other topics. You may want to begin with our overviews on your baby's cues, crying, and sleep patterns.

 

Everything else we've posted is available to you and there are a few ways you can find what you are looking for.

• On the left side, in the section titled Blog Archive, you can find links to every blog we've posted (the titles of each blog are listed with the most recent at the top).
• If you have a specific topic you are interested in, you can use the keyword links, in the Labels section, to find related entries.
• If you just want to browse full entries, you can use the older posts link at the bottom right of the page. This link will take you through the posts, beginning with the most recent.

We hope that you find the information we've provided useful. If you don't find what you are looking for or if you have any questions, please send us a comment. We love to answer our readers' questions and are always accepting new ideas for future posts!

Wow! 750,000 And Counting!

This week, we passed another milestone. 750,000 pageviews! How cool is that?! Thanks so much to all of our new and loyal (never old) readers!

3 Things You May Be Wondering

We haven't posted in awhile and we're sure that our loyal readers may be wondering:

• Where is everybody?
• Why don't you post more information about older babies?
• How is Karolina doing?

So here's a quick note to answer these questions. In case you haven't guessed, all 3 answers are related to each other.

Where is everybody?
This month, we've been shorthanded around the office because we've been traveling to complete a series of trainings related to a new research project we are conducting and "someone" had a baby!

Why don't you post more information about older babies?
Our new research project is related to helping parents understand babies who are older than 6 months. We're learning all we can how best to help parents deal with the challenges of parenting during the second year. As we get further into this new work, we'll be sharing our information with all of you.

How is Karolina doing?
Our loyal readers know that our newest "secrets" blogger had a baby coming along and indeed, he came along! Mom and baby are doing very well. We'll let Karolina update you when she gets back.

So, what does this all mean? This means we are going to ask you to be patient for about one more week, when we will return from most of our travels and trainings and ready to get you the "secrets" you've been waiting for. We've had some more requests to talk more about babies' fears and challenges staying asleep. In the coming weeks, we'll also be sharing more information about "baby videos" and combining work with parenting. In the meantime, we thank you for your loyalty and we invite you to look through our archives for topics that interest you. We'll see all of you on August 1st!

Baby Behavior Goes to Washington!

Ok, it was Virginia but that's pretty close!! Some of us are traveling to share our information in our nation's capital and the rest of us are going to Medford, Oregon! Have a great weekend and we'll be back next week with a new post.

A quick reminder...

With nearly 60,000 page views in the last month, it seems that our blog is getting more and more popular! We are thrilled that so many parents are stopping by to read our information and we are grateful for each and every reader.

In the last few weeks, we've started getting more and more comments and emails from our readers. While we always encourage questions, feedback, and topic ideas, we want to take a few minutes to remind everyone about what kinds of information we can and cannot provide through this site.

We CAN:

• Answer questions about general infant behavior and development (including sleep)
• Provide evidence-based answers to questions about how babies communicate (like cues and crying)
• Provide tips and resources for parents looking for support

We CANNOT:

• Provide medical diagnoses
• Provide one-on-one counseling for very specific feeding, sleep, or crying problems
• Advertise other websites or products

All of our contributors would like to help our readers in any way possible, but we feel it is important not to provide information that we are not qualified to give. We are not medical doctors, we are researchers. Also, there are many issues that require in-person consultation, which is not possible given that we have readers all over the world.

If you have a question and are unsure if it is something we can help with, please send us an email. If we can provide answers and support, we will. If it is something that we feel needs more personalized or medical attention, we will let you know.

Thank you for your continued support of our blog and, as always, we look forward to hearing your thoughts and questions!

The 6 Weeks "Mystery"

We have a question for our readers. When looking at our analytics, we noticed that the most common search term (by a HUGE margin) for finding our blog is "6 week old baby" or something very close to that. Now, we are very curious. Why are so many parents searching for information about their babies at 6 weeks? We have ideas but we'd rather hear it from you. Post a comment and let us know...why 6 weeks?

Half a Million!

We'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has spread the word about our blog. We have been overwhelmed by the response. Very soon, we will have reached an incredible milestone, half a million hits! It took us more than 2 years to get the first 250,000 (and we were thrilled with that!) but with more than 50,000 views per month, it's taken only about 6 months to reach our new peak! While most of our readers come from the United States, the United Kingdom, or Canada, our "secrets" are shared in about 100 different countries all over the world.

If this is your first visit to our blog, we encourage you to review the first few posts and then check out the topics that are of most interest to you by using the keywords on the left side of the page. Again, we want to thank all of our readers who were there at the start or who have joined us along the way. Our best wishes to all of you!

We're Halfway through our Terrible Twos!

That's right, our blog is 2 1/2 years old! It's amazing how fast the time has gone. Here are just a few numbers that show how much we've grown:

• 265 - the number of entries we've posted since June 2009
• 250,000 - the number of total page views in September 2011
• 350,000 - the number of total page views as of yesterday

In the past 3 months, we've had over 100,000 page views! More importantly, we've received wonderful feedback from parents who visit this site. Just last week, we got a wonderful email from a reader, who wrote

Just wanted to say thanks for the great blog. I had my fourth baby almost 6 weeks ago, and of course I feel like a first time mom because every baby is different. The blog posts I have been reading about newborn behavior have reassured me that my baby is normal an that I am doing all that I can for him. It's overwhelming to have another baby after having 3 already, and I am trying to be calm and relaxed, so thanks for the reassurance and tips.  

It made us so happy that we helped this mom and she helped us by reminding us why we do what we do! So, as we move closer to our 3rd birthday, we'd like to thank all of our longtime readers and welcome everyone who's new to our blog. We've covered many topics already, but we're always searching for new and useful information for our readers. If you have something you'd like us to write about or a question you need answered, please send us a comment or an email!

Our Growing Family

As most of you know, the "Secrets of Baby Behavior" is written by the staff of the UC Davis Human Lactation Center. We started this blog over 2 years ago because our research had taught us that many parents were missing important information that scientists had learned about babies' behavior. We hoped that creating a commercial-free research-based blog (written by moms) would provide an objective resource for parents amidst all of the conflicting messages floating in cyberspace. We're so glad that so many thousands of readers have joined us along the way.

Of course, we have continued our research and trainings. We've been working hard to support medical and public health professionals who want to share baby behavior messages with patients and clients. Recently, we realized that professionals could benefit from a blog targeted specifically for them. So, next Monday (October 10), we'll be launching a new blog called "Baby Behaviorist" at http://www.babybehaviorist.com/. We'll still be posting here on the Secrets blog and this blog will stay focused on parents' interests and questions. But, we know that some of our Secrets readers are professionals - doctors, nurses, dietitians, lactation consultants, and public health staff. We encourage those readers (and interested parents too) to check out "Baby Behaviorist" next week!

A Quarter of a Million Page Views!

This week, Secrets of Baby Behavior will pass another milestone - a quarter of a million page views! At just over 2 1/2 years old, interest in our blog has continued to grow. Thanks to all of you who have been with us since the beginning and a big welcome to all of our new readers.We encourage all of our new readers to review the basics and then use the key words on the left to find the topics that are of most interest to you. Some of our earliest readers must have preschoolers now! We appreciate all you've done to spread the word about us...hmmm, I wonder what we'll do when we hit a milllion!

Time Flies...

Can you believe it is already February? We started this blog more than 2 1/2 years ago, but it seems like just yesterday! We've grown from just a few readers to thousands each month. We'd like to thank our loyal readers for coming back and telling your friends.

For those of you who are new to our blog, we'd like to welcome you! If you'd like to know a little about who we are, click here. Over the last few years, we've posted more than 175 entries to help families better understand their babies. Everything we've posted is available to you and there are a few ways you can find what you are looking for. 

• On the left side, in the section titled Blog Archive, you can find links to every blog we've posted (the titles of each blog are listed with the most recent at the top). 
• If you have a specific topic you are interested in, you can use the keyword links, in the Labels section, to find related entries.  
• If you just want to browse full entries, you can use the older posts link at the bottom right of the page. This link will take you through the posts, beginning with the most recent. 

We hope that you find the information we've provided useful. If you don't find what you are looking for or if you have any questions, please send us a comment. We love to answer our readers' questions and are always accepting new ideas for future posts! 

Next time: Ideas to Help with a Waking 9-month-old

We’re 18 Months Old!

This week, Secrets of Baby Behavior turns 18 months old. Since our first post, our readership has grown to more than 6200 visitors per month in more than 100 countries. We wish to thank all of you who have taken the time to post questions or comments. While our readers already know this blog was created as a supportive place for parents and professionals to find research-based information about baby behavior, we thought we would take a moment to explain why we started the Secrets blog all those months ago.

As most of you know, the Secrets blog is written by a group of nutrition scientists (who are also moms) from the UC Davis Human Lactation Center. In 2006, we received a 3-year USDA WIC Special Projects Grant to fund an education project to help participants in the California WIC program understand more about normal infant behavior, including why babies cry and wake up at night, and how babies use cues to communicate with their caregivers. In our earlier studies, we had found that parents who misunderstood their infants’ behavior were likely to think their infants were constantly hungry. The intervention was successful in supporting mothers to follow WIC infant feeding guidelines. The project was so effective that we were asked to expand our trainings to WIC agencies all over California and into a few other states. During the trainings, we realized that many families lacked the information we were providing to WIC and we wondered how we could get this information out to others. Within a few weeks, www.secretsofbabybehavior.com was born. This blog is simply our way of sharing our research with as many families as possible. Thanks to all of our readers and to all of those who have shared the blog with others. Keep tuning in for more Secrets of Baby Behavior in the months ahead and please send us your questions!

Next time: Choosing the Right Gift for Baby